Cynthia Seibert

Cynthia Seibert was born as Kreszenz Suppmayer in Scheyern, Bavaria on Aug 30, 1924. Scheyern was a small community for centuries that derived its life from the Kloster Scheyern beginning as a Benedictine Monastery around the year 1120. In about 1922, her family of four moved into a house which had been the office of the burgermeister and the town’s jail in the 1800’s. Eventually, four more sisters and two of their children would be born in the same house. They lived within direct sight of Kloster Scheyern which flourishes to this day, is known as Scheyern Abbey, and is still under the direction of the Benedictines.
Kreszenz, as surely as most of the local children did, received her secular and Catholic education at the school founded by the abbey in 1838 and which continued classes until the Nazis closed the school in 1939.
As a young teenager, Cynthia was attending school to be a teacher. Those plans ended with the death of her father and with the upheaval of WW2. As the 2nd oldest of the sisters, her mother summoned her back home to help the now fatherless family. She got work in a baby food factory in Munich, about 35 miles away. She narrowly escaped from her temporary home during one of the many aerial bombing and strafing attacks of WW2. Afterwards, she was able to catch a train back to Scheyern where the aerial attacks were not as devastating. They often lent a room to refugees who came from the bombed cities, and the sisters would just pack themselves into another room.
After the war, the German people were destitute and competed for any work that was doled out by the Allied occupation armies or by their appointees. It was while working at the local US Army Camp that she met Sgt. Louis Stanley Seibert of the 116th Signal Service Company, and they married in Scheyern.
After coming to the United States, Kreszenz became a US citizen and then legally changed her name to Cynthia, as many immigrants did to ‘Americanize’ their names. The family which soon included daughter, Dolores (Heidi), and son, Louis, lived in Italy, NC, OH, AL, and GA. She was a full time ‘hausfrau’ and mother to her two children, Dolores (Heidi) and Louis. She introduced her children to church attendance, the Catholic faith, and catechism at an early age. Then in 1966, her husband unexpectedly died.
Remaining a widow thereafter, she became a department manager at Roses Department stores. She was a frequent volunteer at the Augusta, GA Veterans Administration hospitals. After Louis left for college and career, her local family was her eldest sister Betty and her middle sister Theresa, whom also lived in Augusta. All of the families attended St. Joseph Church.
In 1996, she moved to Dothan, AL to live with son, Louis and daughter-in-law, Michelle. For five years in Dothan, she was an active member at St. Columba Church and a regular volunteer at Catholic Social Services in town.
In 2001, she moved to Hendersonville where she sought out her final church home, namely OLOL. She was a regular member of her ladies Bible group and at her weekly chapel adoration prayer group until such time as her failing eyesight and other health issues prevented her.
Cynthia suffered a massive stroke on August 18th and then died on the 19th, 11 days before her 96th birthday. She was preceded in death by her sisters, Betty, Theresa, Agnes, and Regine, all of whom migrated either to the USA or to Canada after WW2. Her youngest sister, Marianne, still lives in Germany. She also leaves behind her daughter Heidi, her son Louis, her grand-daughters Lisa and Kristine, and one great grandson, Ryan.
The family will receive friends on Thursday, August 27, 2020 from 11:00am until her Funeral Mass at 1:00pm at Our Lady of The Lake Catholic Church with Father Luke Wilgenbusch officiating. Interment will be with her husband in Marietta National Cemetery in Georgia on August 28 at 1:00pm
You may offer condolences at www.austinandbell.com
Services are entrusted to Austin and Bell Funeral Home and Cremation Service, Hendersonville. 615-822-4442.